Page 51 of Cherry Picking

“Define dance.”

“That’s a no, which is perfect. Back to the car.”

The Ricochet is a converted warehouse off Main I haven’t visited since the Obama years. Christmas Eve should have killed the turnout, but it did the opposite—the line stretches half a block, girls in tinsel earrings and guys clutching their jackets, everyone breathing steam under the marquee.

I catch Briggs’s sleeve before he can join the end, towing him toward the front. “Come on.”

“Are we cutting?”

“We’re borrowing fame.”

The bouncer frowns, gesturing toward the back, which is fair. I’m not exactly in club attire, and Briggs is, for all intents and purposes, a man with a mustache and a mullet. We don’t exactly scream bottle service.

I flip my phone around, pulling up the first Google image of him I find—helmet off after a win, looking properly miserable. “Can you manage a Christmas miracle for us?”

The bouncer looks from the screen to Briggs and back. “. . . Holy shit.”

Briggs pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Merry Christmas, you two,” the bouncer says with a grin, unhooking the velvet rope.

Briggs pays our covers and stops dead at the threshold. “There are a lot of people in there.”

I take his hand and pull him straight onto the floor before he can think too hard about it. The room swallows us—a surge of body heat, heavy bass, and a hundred strangers who couldn’t care less who we are.

It’s exactly what he needs. Under the flashing lights, no one sees a famous athlete or a grieving brother. For a little while, we both get to just forget.

But Briggs has absolutely zero rhythm. He moves like he’s guarding an invisible net, with rigid footing and stiff shoulders. I laugh at him openly, but he takes it in stride. By the second track, his athletic instincts finally kick in, the tension burns off, and he loosens up.

We move through a string of remixes, including an unhinged Mariah Carey club edit that sets off the entire floor. Eventually, the tracks bleed together. My hair tumbles out of its pins. When Briggs reaches out to guide me away from a stray elbow, his hand settles on my waist.

I notice the staying. He notices me noticing. Neither of us fixes it.

The next song drops slow and low, and the crowd presses us closer. His hand spreads across the small of my back. My palm lands flat on his chest, and under it, his heart is beating quickly.

The discovery does something reckless to me.

When I tilt my chin, he’s already looking down at me, red light along his jaw, his expression stripped of every deflection I’ve ever seen him use. Nobody has looked at me like this in years. Maybe ever.

We move together easily. His thumb traces the line of my spine through my shirt. My fingers curl into his jacket. He bends his head, and his mouth grazes the air over my neck, close enough that his breath lands warm on my skin.

Every nerve ending in my body gathers at that half inch and waits.

I tilt my head to close the gap.

Then the song ends, and the lights swing white for the transition. I can feel him surface—the exact second he comes back into himself. His hand leaves my back, cold air rushing into the space where he was.

“I don’t think we should do this.”

My chest is heaving, sweat at my temple. “Do what, exactly?”

He gestures between us. “This. You and me. It shouldn’t happen.”

“Why not?” The music has started again, and I have to say it loudly, which strips it of any dignity. “Give me one reason.”

“You work for my family. I live two thousand miles away. In three days, I get back on a plane, and you’re the person keeping my father steady.” He recites it like a list he prepared earlier, eyes fixed somewhere past my shoulder. “It’s a bad idea, Evie. You know it is.”

I do know it. Every word is true. Still, I stand there in the strobing dark, understanding that none of those excuses matter. The real reason is behind his eyes, behind that door I glimpsed at the cemetery, and he’s just closed it with me on the outside.